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Apple and a #gate

I have been actively following tech press since 2012. Noticeably every time there was a new announcement from Apple, some video or a blog would pop-up that purportedly unearthed shortcomings of that product. Latest has been about the issue of iPhone 6+ bending after applying concentrated pressure. I think this is one of the stupidest controversy, largely popularised by sites such as MacRumors, CNET, the great Boy Genius Report, YouTube, etc. News aggregator Apple Spotlight did a great job of putting together a brief history and called it iPhonegate, specifically talking about iPhone issues. But I totally fail to understand why CNET or BGR could not make a featured story out of the following articles and keep that on for a week at the top of the webpage!

Of course I would not bother to question their journalism but clearly I can see it is so easy to attract more viewers with a negative propaganda. It was not long ago that CNET found itself in a bit of a mess, and later on renowned Apple follower Daniel Eran Dilger put together an extensive story about how Apple gets bad press so often. Why would not CNET or BGR publish a featured story on Surface Pro 3 issues, the MacBook Air killer (in its previous role it was an iPad killer)?

In 2013, Apple came up with a unique polycarbonate material for iPhone 5c and a few people called that a cheap plastic. Later on, Apple was bold enough to come up with a public document for environment report of iPhone 5c. Every year Apple sells 100s of millions of iPhones, iPads and Macs. Apparently others do so as well! How about a report on environment footprint white paper like this from Samsung, LG, HTC, BlackBerry, Sony, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Microsoft and Huawei? As much as I would like all Apple products to be durable, I would also like them to recyclable and cause lesser harm to environment. Apple bothers to spend time and resources for device recyclability as we know e-waste is a huge issue.

In 2014, consumers want a thinner and lighter smartphone which is also a bit larger. Should Apple have come up with a 12mm thick smartphone, which weighs 250grams? How many of the tech press guys would want to use that? Or for that matter, which company wants to produce a brick like smartphone? Apple is a market leader in polished, high value products and those products are expected to be used in a certain way. Why would someone want to use a 6.22″ smartphone just the exact same way he/she used Sony Ericsson W700i? This year’s iPhones are bigger than ever before, and they are expected to be used differently than, say an iPhone 4s. Apple does carryout robusttesting for their products and they were bold enough to show those secretive test labs. I would like to know how many of the Android OEMs can afford custom built test labs for each of their devices.

"At 275,000 employees, Samsung (just Samsung Electronics) is the size of five Googles! This explains Samsung's machine-gun-style device output; the company has released around 46 smartphones and 27 tablets just in 2014" via Arstechnica

Samsung for its part at least has a muscle power to take a jibe at Apple. But HTC and BlackBerry? They should get their Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss account in right order so that stakeholders (share holders, consumers and employees) get rewarded well enough; and then try to teach people how bad are Apple products. I feel sorry for the whole saga but these two statements sum up the story:

People really love to hate Apple. It should be considered a disorder at this point. ~ J. Gobert (@MrGobert)
About one-fifth of the people are against everything all the time. ~ Robert F. Kennedy